


What Matters Most

by CharbroilLaFlamme



Series: Bioshock: Measurement of A Father [9]
Category: BioShock 1 & 2 (Video Games)
Genre: Angst and Feels, BioShock References, BioShock Spoilers, Family Feels, Fatherhood, Gen, Rapture (BioShock), Short & Sweet, Sort of happy?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-08
Updated: 2018-08-08
Packaged: 2019-06-23 21:31:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15615459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CharbroilLaFlamme/pseuds/CharbroilLaFlamme
Summary: Sinclair sees Marina again. He fully accepts responsibility for this baby girl.





	What Matters Most

Sinclair did not hold back in hugging Marina again.

She had gushed about their matching armbands, hopping up in down in place, her pinkish dress bouncing sweetly with her wavy hair.

“Yes, princess, we match.” He said proudly, taking her little wrist in his hand.

He looked upon her with a tranquil smile, her shining eyes no longer frightened or disturbed him.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

He held her hand—or rather her hand wrapped around two of his fingers—following behind her in the tiny little nursery, hunched over as she began to show him one of her favourite books.

He knew every word and rhyme now by heart and reclined to listen to her read it aloud—for at least the fiftieth time.

Sinclair sighed contentedly, drifting away in thought.

_This perfect little girl. I’m going to... I’m going to be her father._

It was still so foreign a concept to him, but it seemed now that nothing would ever matter more to him than Marina.

_My god._

He heard her reading in that sweet little voice. She was obliviously pronouncing each word awkwardly and giggling at how funny it sounded.

She didn’t know what was going through his head, she wouldn’t understand.

She wouldn’t get that he had never wanted a child in the first place. He couldn’t bear to know how much it’d hurt her to know that.

But it didn’t hold any weight over him anymore, this fantastic baby girl was his now, and he would defend her with his life—as a Protector or as a man. 

He felt as if he had raised Marina from infancy with how devoted he had become.

He would give it all up to keep her safe. And perhaps that was the plan for him all along—but where he would have been infuriated, he was only full of a strange, feather-light happiness.

A placidity that he had not felt in... _ever_.

For far too long, this idea of absolute love had eluded him—and he had finally caught onto it.

And held onto it.

The only thing that this dreadful, soggy, underwater prison had ever offered him—something that did not merely flit by him like a shooting star.

It lasted. It was something he would not soon forget.

“ _My favourite part! My favourite part!_ ” She shrilled, causing Sinclair to bristle in surprise.

She then laughed, pointing at the exact spot on the page that she wanted him to continue from.

Sinclair rolled his eyes, but nodded with a tiny upward curve of the corner of his mouth, and leaned down to continue reading the book to her. He angled the book up slightly to avoid squinting for too long.

For some reason that he could not decipher, this precious, unexpected light of his life had always preferred that _he_ read the part she loved most.

But he didn’t mind. Because it made her smile.

That was all that mattered.

He caught himself starting to go off in thought, beginning to lose the words on the page. He slowly trailed away as he read. 

A perplexed Marina reached up and manipulated his face with her tiny, grabby hands.

“Why are you crying? It’s a happy story.” She play pouted.

“Yes, it is.” Sinclair said, hurriedly wiping his eyes with a wrist. “You’ve got that right, princess.”

She blinked at him, then twisted herself toward him and put her arms up.

She wanted him to hold her. _Right._

They abandoned the book and Sinclair picked her up in his arms, holding her close to himself.

In that moment, Marina was all that existed.

“I love you.” Her tiny voice intoned to him. “Don’t go away.”

”I... I love you, too, baby-doll.” He smiled sadly. “An’ I promise I’ll _never_ go away.”

**Author's Note:**

> Notes!:
> 
> — Sinclair has come to terms at last with Marina being his little girl. Of course, he is deeply disturbed—far beneath these fatherly urges—by the fact that he was brainwashed and conditioned to see these inhuman beasts as honest-to-god children.
> 
> — This is actually one of many, many visits to Marina (hence the fact that he’s reading her favourite book for the upteenth time). It took up until at least two visits prior to this one for him to adapt to loving Marina as his own flesh an’ blood.


End file.
